Female Supervisors More Susceptible to Workplace Sexual Harassment

Study is first to examine trend over time and clearly demonstrate use of harassment as a workplace equalizer

SAN FRANCISCO — Women who hold supervisory positions are more likely
to be sexually harassed at work, according to the first-ever,
large-scale longitudinal study to examine workplace power, gender and
sexual harassment.

The study, which was presented at the 104th annual meeting of the
American Sociological Association, reveals that nearly fifty percent of
women supervisors, but only one-third of women who do not supervise
others, reported sexual harassment in the workplace. In more
conservative models with stringent statistical controls, women
supervisors were 137 percent more likely to be sexually harassed than
women who did not hold managerial roles. While supervisory status
increased the likelihood of harassment among women, it did not
significantly impact the likelihood for men.

“This study provides the strongest evidence to date supporting the
theory that sexual harassment is less about sexual desire than about
control and domination,” said Heather McLaughlin, a sociologist at the
University of Minnesota and the study’s primary investigator. “Male
co-workers, clients and supervisors seem to be using harassment as an
equalizer against women in power.”

McLaughlin and her co-authors examined data from the 2003 and 2004
waves of the Youth Development Study (YDS), a prospective study of
adolescents that began in 1988 with a sample of 1,010 ninth graders in
the St. Paul, Minnesota, public school district and has continued near
annually since. Respondents were approximately 29 and 30 years old
during the 2003 and 2004 waves. The analysis was supplemented with
in-depth interviews with a subset of the YDS survey respondents.

The sociologists found that, in addition to workplace power, gender
expression was a strong predictor of workplace harassment. Men who
reported higher levels of femininity were more likely to have
experienced harassment than less feminine men. More feminine men were
at a greater risk of experiencing more severe or multiple forms of
sexual harassment (as were female supervisors).

In a separate analysis examining perceived and self-reported sexual
orientation, study respondents who reported being labeled as
non-heterosexual by others or who self-identified as non-heterosexual
(gay, lesbian, bisexual, unsure, other) were nearly twice as likely to
experience harassment.

Researchers also found that those who reported harassment in the first
year (2003) were 6.5 times more likely to experience harassment in the
following year. The most common scenario reported by survey respondents
involved male harassers and female targets, while males harassing other
males was the second most frequent situation.

McLaughlin co-authored the study with sociologists Christopher Uggen,
chair of the University of Minnesota’s sociology department and a
distinguished McKnight professor of sociology, and Amy Blackstone,
associate professor of sociology at the University of Maine. The
multi-method research was supported by grants from the National
Institutes of Mental Health and the National Institute of Child Health
and Human Development.

The paper, “A Longitudinal Analysis of Gender, Power and Sexual
Harassment in Young Adulthood,” was presented on Saturday, Aug. 8, at
8:30 a.m. PDT in the Parc 55 Hotel at the American Sociological
Association’s 104th annual meeting.
To obtain a copy of McLaughlin’s paper; for more information on other
ASA presentations; or for assistance reaching the study authors,
contact Jackie Cooper at pubinfo@asanet.org or (202) 247-9871. During
the annual meeting (Aug. 8-11), ASA’s Public Information Office staff
can be reached in the press room, located in the Hilton San Francisco’s
Union Square 1 & 2 room, at (415) 923-7558, (415) 923-7561 or (301)
509-0906 (cell).